The Melancholy of SICP no Shana

 I have this fetish about Elmer's glue. Let me explain.

When I was a boy, around 8 or so, I was doing a project in my boarding school one week where we were each given an egg, a box of 1000 toothpicks, a spool of thread, and a bottle of Elmer's glue. Our task was to build a contraption to keep the egg safe using only the toothpicks, thread, and glue. There were no other rules.

We built during the science class and our teacher--Mrs. Braithwaite--would put them into one of the cafeteria fridges for the rest of the time so the eggs would stay fresh. Mrs. Braithwaite told us that at the end of the week, she would take these contraptions--with the eggs inside--and drop them from the roof of the school gym. We would be graded on the originality of our designs and their utility.

There were lots of great ideas, it was pretty impressive for a bunch of 8- and 9-year olds. I had one of the best innovations. I poured some glue onto a table in the corner of the classroom until it formed a thin flat puddle. I did this a few more times on the rest of the table. Then I put up a sign that said "Do not touch!" and pointed it out to Mrs. Braithwaite. She looked puzzled but played along and told the students not to disturb my work. The next day, I had some nice "sheets" of glue. Instant parachutes. Epic win. The other kids were jealous and started doing the same thing.

 I should mention here that Mrs. Braithwaite was in her mid thirties, with black hair and rimless glasses. She was short, about 5'3" but that was still much taller than me or any of the other kids. And she had a pretty good body. She looked kind of like an older Shannen Doherty, but nicer and more normal-looking, not like a TV star. Usually she would wear a sweater and a skirt that would come down past her knees and some flats. Basically a nice-looking woman whether you were 7, 17, or 37, but not what I would call hot.

But anyways I was almost out of glue and still had a long ways to go on my frame for the egg. So I asked Mrs. Braithwaite if I could have another bottle of Elmer's. She said if she gave me more glue she'd have to give more to all the students. I kept asking her and she caved and asked the class to vote. Everyone making parachutes said yes and it was game on.

The whole episode was kind of like what the Pentagon and a big defense contractor: they demonstrate an interesting technological capability, then fall short in building the fighter jet or whatever, and they finally demand more money to make the idea work. And they almost always get it. Anyways Mrs. Braithwaite finally said OK but told me I'd have to help her deal with the extra glue, whatever that meant. Anyways next thing you know there's glue all over every flat surface in the classroom.

But I had another trick up my sleeve. I made more sheets for the next two days and then put them into an overlapping pattern and added some more glue and thread, being careful to save enough thread to attach the parachute and also secure the egg in the frame I had built for it. The result was strong and big and by the time the other kids realized what I was doing it was the end of class on Thursday and they didn't have time to copy me. So I felt pretty good. Right before school ended, Mrs. Braithwaite told me to stay after class, though, so the good feeling didn't last long.

After the other students had left she closed the door and told me she was very impressed with my project but that my approach had made it hard for her that week because there was glue everywhere. There were some students who had accidentally spoiled other students' parachutes by putting their hands on the semi-dry glue puddles and that sort of thing.

Mrs. Braithwaite said that since I came up with the idea in the first place that I should stay and help her fix the other students' parachutes to be fair--not make them bigger, just put glue into the gaps that a few clumsy kids had caused. They would still be structurally inferior to mine. I figured this sounded fair. So we got a few bottles of Elmer's and went to work.

Anyway as she and I were fixing the glue puddles I looked at her and noticed she was eating some of the glue. That's right, just like a little kid: eating the Elmer's glue. She had some on her index finger and sucked it off. Some of the glue was still on her face. There was a little dribble of glue coming down from the corner of her mouth.

Now I am here to tell you that I felt something at that moment that I did not fully understand for years. Mrs. Braithwaite asked me if I liked the taste of glue. I said, "Um, I guess" or something like that but what happened next is simultaneously kind of fuzzy and yet parts are also still crystal clear even 15 years later.

She came closer to me, rolled her finger in a puddle of still-wet glue, and licked it clean. Then she brought the finger up to my mouth. I still remember how her nails were polished: light pink, with a few scratches. I didn't know what to do, so I just sucked her finger. I could still taste some of the Elmer's glue on it. Then she put a little dab of glue on the side of her neck and asked me if I wanted to lick it off.

At this point I was confused and a little scared. This was really weird and I knew something wasn't right but damn it I liked Elmer's as much as the next kid and it seemed kind of cool to do this with her. It wasn't like kissing a girl or anything. So I did it. Then she asked if she could put some glue on me. I said OK and next thing you know there's glue on my fingers and then they're in her mouth. It felt great.

Then Mrs. Braithwaite took off her glasses and asked me to take off my shirt. This part I remember very clearly because I was wearing a Phoenix Suns shirt with Charles Barkley on it. The Suns were great back then. Anyway, I was trembling a little bit but she put a hand on my knee and said everything was OK and I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to.

That relaxed me a lot. I knew it must feel good when grownups made out or had sex so I figured this might be pretty cool even though it was really weird. I mean, Mrs. Braithwaite was *nice*. It's important to keep in mind how large a teacher looms in your mind as a kid. But she was nice. I trusted her.

So anyways I took off my shirt and took a deep breath. Time seemed to bend in on itself. I was covered in glue and she was licking it all off. My pants were off--to this day I don't remember which one of us took them off or how--and suddenly I was naked, with glue all over me.

Suddenly I noticed her skin becoming much darker than it was earlier, and her head started to flatten and her body become skinnier as she licked the glue from my chest. The next minute, I blinked in confusion as what stood before me now looked like a large black snake.

"Ha! Fooled you!" she hissed. Now, before I devour you, I'd like to ask you one thing:

"HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?"

Much to my surprise, there was a knock on the classroom door. As nervous as I already was, I didn't feel comfortable having another person there. Mrs. Braithwaite went to open the door and it turned out to be the school principal.

Mrs. Braithwaite let him and promptly exited the classroom. So, there I was with my pants down in the excited state as I was, and the school principal beginning to take his pants off.

"I am The Sussman", the principal said in a low, almost snake-like voice as Mrs. Braithwaite slithered out the door.

"What?"

The principal, whose name I cannot recall to this day, slowly walked towards me. I was hoping Mrs. Braithwaite would return soon, but with every passing second, I was losing hope.

He promptly asked me to bend over and touch my toes, like the school gym teacher did during gym class. Without warning, he rammed his long cock straight up my ass. I must tell you, it hurt at first. Soon, I started crying.

"Have you read your SICP today?" he asked.

"But is that even relevant to the current situation or is it just --" I began to retort automatically, but he cut me off.

"Nevermind. You have yet to achieve Satori, young padawan. Let me show you."

He took off his pants off completely. In place of his penis was something long and black. My vision had begun to blur from the glue, so it was only until he got close to my fact that I could see it was the head of a snake.

Shit.

Without warning, the snake extended from its crotch and chomped down hard on my penis.
At first I tried to scream from the excruciating pain, but then the pain slowly started to fade away and my vision blurred considerably. The room disappeared into a haze of grey, which was followed by a dithered pattern with an X-like cursor in the center.

A mouse logo appeared and started flashing. "What the fuck?" I thought to myself. The words "Starting XFCE..." appeared.

"I have now managed to successfully connect to your X server," I heard his voice emanating from inside my head. "Welcome to the XFCE desktop environment!"

"What is this?" I thought. I tried to move the cursor around, and I discovered that I could do it by only thinking. I automatically moved it down to the XFCE Menu at the bottom and clicked on the Terminal icon instinctively.

"NO!" The Sussman cried in a loud voice that filled my head. An intense wave of pain coursed through my body as the terminal window opened. "First, you must learn Scheme. Click on the DrScheme icon in the bottom right, the one that looks like a red and blue Lambda."

"Oh no fucking way!" I exclaimed. "I won't listen to him." As if by the magic of eval and apply, those words appeared in the terminal window next to the bash prompt. "bash: I: command not found" followed, and the infuriating wave of pain shook my body once again.

"LISTEN TO ME! I AM THE MASTER!" I heard The Sussman's voice fill my head, sending more tendrils of pain through my body. I resisted the pain and slowly, but deliberately, thought "sudo rm -rf /".

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

The Sussman screamed madly and an even stronger wave of pain blasted its way through my body. I thought "enter" and the terminal complied, asking for the root password.

"What now?" The Sussman laughed heartily. "You think a mere mortal like you could defeat me that easily? I am root!"

Without much thought I immediately thought "SATORI" followed by enter.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..." The scream and resulting waves of pain from The Sussman faded away as everything flickered and turned black. The stark white text "Connection to X server lost" appeared, followed by a kernel panic. The system had halted, but how could I get out?
I now realized that I had killed The Sussman, who was the only hope of my escape. I just... existed, in a void of a coredump, thinking.

"Now I remember! Mrs. Braithwaite! That snake that loved glue!" ...but how could she help now? How could I even get out of this virtual existence? After pondering the situation for an unknown amount of time since time() had stopped, I came up with the answer:

"I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I EXIST." I thought. "I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I EXIST. I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I EXIST. I AM. I THINK. THEREFORE I EXIST." The incantation played itself out in my mind.

"What else could I reason, supposing that I exist?" I thought to myself. "I am, and I think, and I exist. What more?" Those words continued to repeat themselves in my mind, until I accidentally thought "I exit." instead of "I exist."

A bright flash of light filled my vision and then "Analog input: 720x480 75Hz" appeared in bright white letters in the middle.
"Checking memory... 1048576K OK"
"Boot: found master boot record on primary master.
lilo: "

I thought "enter" and the kernel booted, this time in single-user mode. No traces of The Sussman appeared, and finally bash finished loading. "IRL" I thought, followed by "enter".

"Analog input: 1600x1200 75Hz" flickered in my view for a few seconds, before changing to what I had thought was reality -- I laid on the table, covered in Elmer's glue. The principal lay lifeless on the floor, his snakelike black penis shriveled up and similarly dead.

Mrs. Braithwaite walked in as I sat up and began peeling the dried glue from my body, starting with my penis.

"What in Haruhi's name happened here?!?!" she shrieked with horror at the sight.

"I... I have no idea," I responded quietly.
"I would have to agree. I just fainted and had the vision that I was a snake that loved glue."

The principal was later found to have died of mysterious causes -- his entire brain was missing, as were all of his organs. It was as if someone moved everything inside his body to /dev/nul. We had the contest the next day, and I won with my egg parachute.

I normally take the bus home, so I headed for the bus stop. A short while later, the bus had stopped at a traffic light outside of the library when all of a sudden this huge black snake head with retarded-looking eyes pops through the window and screams loudly "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" With almost no thought I departed the bus, and I ran inside as quickly as possible; the snake head was now chasing me around as I frantically searched for the legendary book among the shelves. I spotted the distinctive blue cover and ran toward it, the huge head inches from my ass. With great force I pulled the book from the shelf and instinctively directed it at the black head which by now was dripping with saliva at the mouth. It disappeared as it made contact with the book, disintegrating into a flurry of glowing parentheses.

I just sat there dazed for a few seconds, watching the feathery parentheses slowly become smaller and fade away into nothingness. Slowly, I stood up, still clutching the purple book. I wondered about what I should do with it, then decided to put it back on the shelf. After doing so, I walked back out to the exit and boarded a bus, for where I did not know. The bus driver looked strangely familiar as I dropped the coins into the farebox;

"HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" he suddenly yelled at me. Oh fuck, I thought to myself. Now I knew why he looked so familiar: He was the principal I thought had died, he was The Sussman!

"Umm... no," I responded weakly. Suddenly his head looked a lot darker than it was a moment ago, and an evil grin appeared across his face. The bus's doors slammed shut and The Sussman's face turned an almost negroid black. His left hand shot at me and I could see that it was not a hand, but the head of a snake which protruded from its end. I turned around and ran towards the back of the articulated bus.

"Let me show you the power of Satori," The Sussman said in a deep hiss. His snakelike arm extended from his body towards me as I continued to run for what seemed like eternity towards the longbus's rear door.

"Longbus is loooooooooooooooooooooong", I thought to myself as I continued to run, the snake's head fast approaching. The bus seemed to go on forever. After a while, I passed the driver's seat. WTF, I thought. Ahead of me was The Sussman, standing in the aisle facing the same direction as me, with his left arm pointed forward.

I looked behind me, and saw the snake head was still approaching; I had managed to outrun it for a bit, and it was racing towards me. RECURSION! I jumped into the stepwell just as the head gained a sudden burst of speed, piercing through The Sussman and sending bright glowing parentheses everywhere. I watched first his body, then his hands disintegrate in the same manner that the head had earlier. The long black arm, floating in mid-air, slowly disappeared into a cloud of these glowing parentheses, and the snake's head, which I now noticed had come through the windscreen along with me, did the same after a few moments.

I stepped over to the driver's seat, looking for the door release switch. I found what appeared to be the switch and toggled it, but the doors did not open. Shortly after, a low hissing sound emanated from the bus itself, followed by the loud booming cry of "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?", which felt as if it was coming from inside my head. Suddenly everything turned black, and "Power saving mode activated." appeared for a few moments before disappearing into the blackness.

A woman stood there, entirely naked. Her flaming red hair blew in wet waves around her head. Her skin was covered with flecks of rain. Her breasts stood out deliciously and generously from her finely-formed frame. From her head to her heels she was golden, curvaceous and real - real both because nothing about her was fake or affected and because she seemed utterly solid and inevitable. She was absolutely beautiful and when I looked at her I felt strongly in two ways. First, that I knew her well, or that somehow she fit exactly with me, as if I had out of the blue found something I had dreamt from whole cloth. Second, that I wanted to grab her savagely, bring her mouth to mine and kiss her with desperate passion, kiss her all up and down her rain-wet body, suck on her perfectly-formed nipples, and never stop touching her, lying under her in the grass breathing gently after we become tired, holding my arm around her body as she drifts into sleep. I looked up at her, hesitant to move. It was only when she smiled and shifted her weight slightly that the fact hit me: She was not some extension of myself, some manifest thought of mine. She was filled with a life all of her own.
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" she suddenly shouted at me.

I stood there for a second in awe and sat down on the ground. Although the rain had not stopped, the grass was mostly dry. The all-pervading wetness of October was gone and instead I felt a hopeful humidity all around me. I sat there in the blue dawn and felt something begin deep inside me, a new idea twisting with potential. I closed my eyes. The warmth that blew around me kindled a warmth in my body. Although my eyes were shut, I felt my whole self filled with light that glowed softly golden. I was aware of every part of myself, all filled with this light. A great lamp shone deep within my torso, brighter and brighter, pumping through the ventricles of my heart, beams coruscating through my mind, down along my spine, through my kidneys, down to my feet..
"I'm not just a Torch. I'm Sakai Yuji," I thought to myself.

When I finally came around by the island, the morning was kindling in the deep blue sky. The basin of the lake reverberated like a bell and the sound, which was beneath human hearing, was translated into that living blueness. As I ran, I couldn't help but mull over my odd conversation with the solitary girl. It really was beyond explanation, what with the weird bangle and her strange but subtle shifts of mood. My thoughts were interrupted, however, when I suddenly felt the same strange dreamwalking feeling again. It was as though I had crossed an invisible line. The wind suddenly changed directions and the new gust blew warm.

The bliss was almost shocking. The wind blew around me and over my wet skin. Numbed limbs and muscles awoke to what felt like the warming breath of spring. The air was tangible and thick with healing, and carried not the smell but the essence of a whole forest of awakening flowers and newly growing plants. The inner rhythm that kept my feet moving fled right out of me and I stopped on the grass. I closed my eyes and felt acutely that I could expand through the warm air like ink dropped on wet paper. The wind blew through me with life and the unexpected gift made me fill with gratitude. The wind still blew warmth softly around me, but the heartbreaking glow was gone.

Everything turned black once more, and I heard a loud click that seemed to originate far away, followed by a piercing beep and the whirring sound of a hard drive spinning up. My vision flashed white and "Analog input: 720x480 Hz" came up once again, followed by the POST sequence and the lilo: prompt. I booted the kernel as I did before, and executed the IRL
command again.

"Analog input: 1600x1200 75Hz" once again appeared, and I found myself still inside that mysterious bus, which was completely empty. The engine was still running, and it was still parked outside the library. "The library! Of course!" I thought to myself. As if my mind had been read, the front doors swung open and I ran from the bus toward the library, which also looked empty. I entered the building and frantically ran to where I had found the prized book earlier. The book was still there, and I grabbed it instinctively, then walked to the checkout. All but one counter was open, and
there was a little Asian girl standing there; the place was deserted except for me and her. I put the book on the counter and she looked at it for a moment, then at me.

"Have you read your SICP today?" she asked.

I came up to my knees in front of her. My face was on level with her chest a couple feet away from her. She said nothing, but her face broke into a full smile and she put her hand underneath my chin, looking at me. It was with that touch, feeling her hand's heat against my face, that I knew that she and the glow that had burned through me were somehow one and the same. I reached out my hand and gently put it against her breast. It was just a bit bigger than my hand -and my hands are pretty big! - so I traced the underside of it. She looked at me with an impish grin and took her hand from my face, putting her arms behind her back and thrusting her chest a bit towards me. I let my fingers sink into her breast, my thumb pressing down her nipple, which sprang right back up as I passed over it. Her breast was soft but more dense than I was used to in my limited experience. Or, I should say that it was denser than usual for her size. I moved my hand and let it fall slightly back into its natural perkiness.

"You too?" I replied. "Have some tits and then GTFO and read your SICP!", she angrily and unexpectedly shouted, then pulled up her shirt to show me her tits. She shoved the book into my hands and disappeared almost spontaneously amidst the dark area of the counter.

I left the library, and waited at the bus stop. The previous bus was no longer there. The girl I saw earlier walked up to me and looked at the Wizard Book I was holding, then glanced down at my crotch.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING STANDING THERE LIKE AN IDIOT? READ IT!" she suddenly shouted. Astounded, I quickly opened the book and started to read the first chapter. I was so intrigued by the book that I didn't notice she had begun to give me a blowjob. When I looked down, she took his mouth from my cock to angrily shout "GO BACK TO READING YOUR SICP" and so I did. I didn't even notice that I came until after she told me to stop reading. Reverently I ran my hands down her body on either side from her armpits down to her knees. In a bit, out a bit, back in along the thighs. Rainwater ran with my hands and beaded up after they had passed. I took hold of her lower back and placed a slow kiss right under her bellybutton. Her skin felt soft but at the same time tight with vigor and life, an electric warmth against my lips. Gradually I traveled in a string of kisses up the center of her stomach until the top of my head grazed her breasts. Instead of shoving my way through the soft canyon I slowly stood up into a crouch and began again with a kiss right on the top of her cleavage, journeying up past her collarbone and her solid but graceful neck. I paused for a moment to look into her eyes as I stood up to my full height.
"You may call me Shana..." she said in a low, barely audible voice.

Her face was full of an amazing joy that was beyond my understanding. Years and years of patience and starvation cracked and revealed an untouched soul. I embraced her tightly to me and kissed her tender and long. I would say that it was the best kiss of my life, but taking into account subsequent events I can't stand by that statement. Suffice it to say that the moment our lips touched, I ceased to be a man and became instead a pair of lips, opening and closing, caressing, totally subsumed in the movement and transformation of the mouth I was kissing, and when she gave me her tongue I accepted and reciprocated. It may seem silly to say but even her tongue was full of life and joy, quick but tender. I spread my hands across her lower back, my fingers just barely dimpling the top of her glorious ass. The kiss was passionate, strong but not savage, and every deep breath spooled out into turbulent rivers of time.

A short while later, the bus arrived and I boarded, relieved to see the bus driver acting normally. She remained at the stop, presumably to wait for a different bus. Throughout the ride to my place near the lake I nervously glanced at the windows hoping the head would not reappear.

She was gone and I hadn't even said a single word to her once we boarded the bus. But as I looked around in a daze, feeling again the torches in the brisk autumn breeze, I stepped on something.

A silver blacksmith's puzzle.

I grabbed the puzzle from the ground. It was maybe a little bit more coppery, maybe a little bit bigger, but I was sure it was the same one that Mrs. Braithwaite was wearing the day before. I jangled it around for a bit, still basking in the glow of the impossible thing that had just happened to me. I was beginning to get serious chills from the wind and the rain. As far as I could tell, the area was completely empty. I had to start running again.

As I ran, as my body began to stoke its own furnaces against the pervasive cold, the amazing joy faded into memory, and all of the mysteries of the past couple days piled up into one intractable question. The dreamlike experience with Mrs. Braithwaite had been odd, but it hadn't flaunted the rules of our universe like the snake, the Sussman and that strange Linux system. However, the strange blacksmith's puzzle seemed to link both meetings. Who was I dealing with here? Were these two people somehow the same? But then, I killed the principal. None of it fit together, and the puzzle jingled in my pocket. All I knew was my stomach felt as though a thunderstorm were brewing there, and my mind reeled as if I was standing on the brink of a huge cliff. I was too shaken to know whether I was bewildered, terrified or falling in love. I ran the rest of the way around the lake and up the hill to my house as if fueled by righteous anger.

By the time I got home, the grey morning had fully dawned. I had school in fifteen minutes, but instead I called in late and took a long, hot shower. Warmth seeped back into my bones and I calmed down enough to face the day. When I got to school Mrs. Braithwaite gave me a lecture and a warning for coming in late, but the day was good overall. Everybody seemed to be charged with that autumn energy that emanates from the friction of dry leaves as they blow around in piles on the pavement. I couldn't stop revisiting that day in my mind, playing it over and over, remembering the way her skin darkened, the mysterious principal with the snake-penis. On the bus back home I took her puzzle out and set out determinedly to solve the thing.

The rings were connected each to at least two others, and they weren't quite circular. There was also a piece that looked like a bulbous U, prevented from disconnecting with the others by its odd shape. I flipped pieces over and through in many ways but I wasn't able to make a real change in the thing's configuration. I had gotten one of the rings over to a different part of the U and was trying to flip the others around or through it when the bus arrived at my stop. My heart pounded in my ears. I jumped to my feet, shoved the puzzle in my pocket and ran out of the door, making a direct line not for my house but for the lake. If there was any chance at all, I figured something would happen there. The sky darkened and the clouds thickened. Rain began to fall suddenly. I looked up just in time to see a huge black snake head forming amongst the clouds.

"HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" it asked.

I ran past the old bathhouse to where I had a feeling something was going to happen. I crossed the line where I had felt the dreamwalking feeling before but I was too excited to notice anything. Panting, I neared a log sat down on it. The lake was forest green under the clouds and the wind moved the cattails sporadically back and forth, but whoever, whatever it was I had met those times showed no sign of themselves. After a few minutes of growing disappointment, I stumbled down to the lakeside.

"Ummm, hello? Are you there?" I said softly, speaking to the wind and the ripples, hopefully out of earshot of the people on the path behind me and the head in the sky, which the other people didn't seem to notice, nor did they the darkening of the sky. A duck swam by, eyeing me skeptically. "I really want to see you again. That day..." The wind picked up a bit. A couple leaves floated by, landed in the water. Nothing happened. "Who are you!" I shouted, more loudly than I intended, and my voice broke. I turned and strode back up the hill, the head still glancing ominously at me from its place in the clouds.

I was falling in on myself with frustration. Wheels in my mind were turning and grinding without any fruit. I must have looked terrible because everybody on the path seemed to be staring at me. A couple I passed glanced at me and the woman made a whispered remark to the man. When I looked at them they shifted their gaze straight ahead in embarassment. I felt extremely self-conscious and picked up the pace. But as I came to the next bend, who should come walking around the other side than my friend Kazumi.

She actually saw me before I saw her. "Hey! Sakai-kun!"

I groaned silently. This was not the time for friendly conversation. Normally I would have loved to stop and chat, but I was feeling seriously shaken and bewildered and I wanted to get home. I put on a smile which must have looked slightly strange on my preoccupied face and greeted her. "Hey Yoshida-san, what's up? How are you?"

"Just great! Yeah, I've almost finished my homework now. What's up with you?" Yoshida Kazumi was blonde and pretty small, at least compared to me. She had a compact body that went up and down mountains like a goat. But her face was all round lines, bright eyes and a slightly flat nose. She had an infectious, hardy liveliness that often helped me out when I was struggling on the project, but she was often a bit blunt. I liked hanging out with her, especially with a group of other friends but right now I didn't want to deal with her.

"Well, I-.. I .. just thought, what a good time for a little stroll. I love the wind this time of year." I was grasping for straws.

"Yeah, me too," she replied. "I go around twice most days, you'd think we'd meet more often." Then she paused for a second and looked at me more closely. My discomfort must have been showing. She started to go on but then stopped again. "Sakai-kun, are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm--"

"You look sort of pale. Are you sure?"

"Well, I think I might be coming down with something. I've been sort of hoarse." No lie indeed, my voice sounded like I had just eaten a curry.

"Ok, well, take care of yourself." She made as if to leave, but turned back. "We should really hang out more often, you know. Call me up sometime, maybe we can get everybody together."

"Hey Yoshida-san, it's been nice seeing you but I've got some stuff to do, so..."

"All right, see you later I guess." A hint of disappointment?

"Yeah, definitely," I said. We waved to each other and began to walk away. But she shouted back to me.

"Call me, OK?"

The head in the sky had remained silent, but now decided to ask again in a loud booming voice: "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?"

"YES!" she suddenly looked up at the sky and screamed at the head. "How could she have read the Wizard Book? Did she just become aware of the head?" I thought to myself. But there was no time for that. The black head slowly started to descend from the clouds.

"Now look what you did!" I scolded her angrily. The head had now reached an altitude where I could see its menacing grin, and it appeared to shrink to the size of a small car.

"Don't worry," she casually said, suddenly producing a copy of the Wizard Book. "I am a Knight of the Lambda Calculus, a Guze no Tomogara."

She faced the descending head and held the book with both hands, waiting for its attack. The snake lurched forward, disintegrating into a flurry of glowing parentheses when it hit the book.

"How did you...?" I stuttered.

"Because I can. You should just accept everything I say, I don't HAVE to give any reasons for my arguments because I am an EXPERT PROGRAMMER."

I grunted and continued on towards home. I felt unstable at some fundamental level, unable to go back over the conversation and determine how strangely I was acting. Yoshida-san was also acting strange somehow, but I wasn't really able to understand that either. I felt a bit of regret for leaving her so abruptly, so I decided to call her up later. It had been a while since we had seen each other. I just had to get home for the night, have dinner, relax in a warm chair, a warm bed.

Through the whole evening I felt a yearning resonate in me, the memory of that abnormal day. I carried it with me that night into sleep.

The sky was light and the wind was blowing early the next morning. I awoke out of a cloud of amazing dreams, which although they all blurred together in my memory had all touched on the fantastic encounter the day before. I sat up in bed. I suddenly realized that I didn't care who or what was in the waters at the lake, I wanted to join it, be a part of it, that I had already fallen in love. The whole mystery that obsessed me yesterday was of no consequence, or rather, now I realized that I needed to fully abandon myself to it rather than solve it.

As this feeling crystallized in my head, quite from nowhere I had a breakthrough concerning the blacksmith's puzzle. I hopped out of my bed and retrieved it out of my pants pocket. I focused on it entirely and unconsciously and although I can't tell you exactly what I did, the steps came clear and unbidden straight to me, and step by step I put the puzzle through its changes. When I was done, the links were still inextricably bound together, but I had been able to break up a large cluster into two symmetrical subunits that were both still linked to the central U. The understanding of the solution slipped away from me as soon as I tried to figure out what I had done. But I was certain what I had to do now.

There was no hurry. My classes didn't cross my mind once. I slipped into a new T-shirt, jeans and a jacket and walked straight down to the lake through soggy leaves and brisk fall air. I reached the lake and walked towards the bathhouse.

I knew as soon as I crossed the line that something was drastically different. Before, walking across the line had been like walking into a dream, and for a little bit when you were inside you forgot what things were part of you and which were not, but the feeling quickly passed. Now it was almost a tangible barrier. I crossed it and felt like I was walking into water, making a splash that sent out ripples in unseen directions. Every step was a push through deep fluid, and as I walked I felt an awareness build up around me, all through every part of the air, the bushes beside me, the path under my feet, and I partook in it as well. Everything around me awoke and became more and more hyperfocused on me. Standing on a hill above the water, I brought my hand out of my pocket and held out the puzzle. I was astonished to see that it was glowing pearly white and frantically going through changes, adding rings, twisting patterns, often in three states at the same time. The world trembled like a wave and the sky glowed twisty purple and I got the impression of two great eyes rising over the horizon, bending distance, pulling me into them.

I spoke and the universe spoke with me: "shutdown -h now"

My perception of reality faded into black and "Analog input: 720x480 75Hz" once again flickered before I saw before me a wall of text, the kernel going through its shutdown sequence.
Sending all processes the TERM signal...
Sending all processes the KILL signal...
Turning off swap
Unmounting others
Unmounting root

The text scrolled down my view and then everything turned black. A loud click, followed by the faint whirring of fans stopping and a hard disk spinning down were heard emanating from far away.

When my world rebooted and I entered IRL again, I was now laying down on my bed, seemingly unaware of everything that happened while I was in sleep(). I looked at the clock and it was 6:45 - still an hour until I had to leave for school. I had time to burn. I turned over and realized I had the biggest case of morning wood in my clinical history as far as I could remember it. I was engorged and thick and I could feel myself powerfully pressing against the mattress. Unconsciously I began to push in and out against the bed, slowly and steadily building up tension, controlling my arousal. I started in on one of my most common fantasies.
***********

Miko stood uncomfortably in her short skirt and blouse in front of her new boss. She was scared and embarassed by the unusual alterations to her body. Her petite breasts were now big and round, with thumb-sized nipples making little tents in her blouse. Her new penis was big enough to raise up her skirt and just poke out from under the edge of it. And her belly felt really weird.

"So you just want me to... pee?" she asked hesitantly.

"That's right, just into this cup," said her boss. "Just try it out."

"All.. All right..." she said. She was flushing a deep red. But suddenly she actually had to pee. It was tough making her muscles relax in front of a strange man, but eventually she could feel the liquid traveling down her penis from its base to its tip. It was cold!

Her boss held the cup out and after a couple seconds it filled with a red liquid. "Good job," he said. "Now see what it tastes like!"

She took a sip and it wasn't bitter at all, like urine, it was sweet! It tasted just like cranberry juice!

*************
The scene played itself out in my head like a movie. Usually I can't hold the whole thing in my head, but now it was all there, every little detail. I kept the thrusting slow to keep my climax at bay. I was totally in control.

*****************

"And if they want ice, you know what to do," her boss said. "Yup," said Miko. She was ready to go on the floor.

The first table had a man and two women, probably a couple and a sister out for a date. She walked up and asked them what they wanted.

"We'll have two cranberry juices and a Pilsner for my sister," the man said. "Just a second," said Miko. She walked over to the man's glass and relaxed her muscles. Nothing happened for a couple seconds, but then her big half-erect penis filled with cold juice and out of the tip came a red splash of juice into the cup. Soon it was full. She used her hand to squeeze out the last drops.

"Do you want some ice?" she said. She squatted and pulled her skirt up to reveal her beautiful behind, little pink button right in the center. She pushed and from behind you could see the clear piece of ice, completely clean, squeezing through her butthole, falling into the glass. It was really cold! Two more came out, plop! plop!

She had no idea what they'd done to her gut but it was really weird. She kinda liked it! The whole situation was making her aroused and she was getting really stiff!
************

I was holding strong and steady. I felt like I could keep going for ages. I let myself come almost to orgasm and then reined myself back in. I wasn't done with this story.

He slowed down as she spurted and when she was done he sucked the last bit of syrup from her glans. The whole thing had taken around twenty seconds. She wanted to collapse on top of this young man but instead she smiled and said, "Have a nice day sir!" and walked to her next table.

Normally I would have come along with the poor girl in the fantasy, but I found that today the road stretched further into unimaginable heights. I passed the normal point of orgasm and the tension kept building, collecting in my penis and all up and down my spinal column like a spring. The good feeling before orgasm collected and built as if in a feedback loop, intensifying past the normal pleasure of ejaculation, towering into a golden frenzy. The fantasy kept on.

***********

Miko stood behind a thin plywood wall at the festival outside the cafe with plugs in her ears. Passers-by looking at the wall would see a painted picture of a woman at the beach, but Miko's gigantic, creamy naked breasts stuck out from two holes in the wood through the torso of the painted woman's svelte swimsuited figure. Miko's erect penis stuck out incongruously and egregiously through another hole in the wall, not lining up in any aesthetic way with the woman's body. Miko couldn't see if anybody was looking. Her penis hardened further and she flushed bright red, knowing that everybody could see her most private parts but nobody knew it was her. A minute passed in electrically charged silence. Because of her earplugs, she didn't know whether there was a crowd out there or anybody at all. Suddenly she felt a hand grab her left breast. She drew in a sharp intake of breath. Whoever it was began to knead it slowly. She arched her back in arousal, and imported German beer sprayed out from her nipples. Then she felt the tongue on the head of her cranberry-red penis...

I came. Instead of the usual wave of intense pleasure I was expecting to experience, an excrutiating shock of pain exploded through my body. When I opened my eyes, I saw nothing but a wall of text, and at the very bottom:

Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!

"Shit." I thought to myself. "I have to get to school but instead I decided to fap and now I think I killed reality." Remembering what had happened that day, I immediately thought "I exit" and rebooted. I couldn't express my anxiety through my non-existent body, but I could feel it. It seemed to take ages for init and fsck to finish. Finally, I got back to IRL.

After all my senses had initialized, which seemed to take around fifteen seconds, I was now aware that my underwear was filled with spooge. I had to hop quickly out of bed before it soaked through and stained the sheets. In the bathroom, I slid the wet underwear off of my body and stepped into the shower. My pubic hair was matted pearly-white and my penis was still half hard. I washed myself off and my underwear too for good measure. The shower felt really good, and by the time I was done I was sure I was going to be late for class. But after I toweled myself off, I rushed to the clock and it was only 7:30. Just enough time!

I threw on some clothes, grabbed some change and my bus pass, and ran down to the bus.

I hopped onto the bus and sat down in the front.

I always love taking furtive looks at my fellow passengers on the bus. It's one of the few public spaces where people sit down near each other and actually feel comfortable carrying on conversations, reading their books, doing homework. I try to figure out their favorite authors, what subjects they're studying, what patches they have on their backpacks. But the bus is also a difficult place to start a conversation with someone: it gets awkward talking to a perfect stranger after about five minutes, and then you're just staring at each other for the rest of the ride, the ice having been broken but neither person having a good idea what to say. So people generally make little comments about the weather and stay in their pretended privacy, as if they weren't squinched into a narrow seat between a ponderous juggalo and an elderly woman who smells of cat food.

Today the bus was mostly empty. Two or three middle-aged women in sweatsuits. A nervous man with a sport coat and tie. A South Asian couple, probably high school age, linked arms, the girl immersed in her cell phone and the boy looking out the window. The bus stopped at a stop and on walked a young woman. My heart skipped a beat.

She was the spitting image of Miko from my uniquely well-realized fantasy. Half East Asian, half caucasian, nervous, naive features, and beautiful large soft round breasts, cradled in a fuzzy blue sweater. She looked flushed, as if she had run to catch the bus, and she had dark circles under her eyes. She sat down on my side of the bus, one seat between us. I forgot to breathe, let alone to worry about her noticing my unabashed ogling. But amazingly, nobody seemed to see either of us, and she seemed to be too exhausted to register my presence. I mastered myself, but not before I stole a curious gaze at the crotch of her blue jeans. There wasn't any sign of a gigantic penis. I don't know whether I was relieved or disappointed.

A short while later, the bus had stopped at a traffic light outside of the cemetary when all of a sudden this huge black snake head with retarded-looking eyes pops through the window and screams loudly "HAVE YOU READ YOUR SICP TODAY?" I ran off the bus as quickly as possible; the snake head was now chasing me around as I ran among the tombstones, searching for something that I felt instinctive to. Suddenly I stopped and walked to a particular tombstone. On it was inscribed the huge letter Lambda, and underneath was written

HERE LIES THE CORPSE OF GERALD JAY SUSSMAN
HE READ HIS SICP, HAVE YOU?

"Use this," I heard a voice from behind me say.

I turned around to see that girl standing there, holding a copy of SICP. Instinctively I took it from her and placed it in front of the tombstone. We both crouched down and held each other, singing the SICP theme song and a short prayer.

Once we had finished, I looked at her and the book resting on the tombstone, then back at the bus; the snake head was no longer there.
"You? You were that snake?" I asked dubiously.

"Yes. I am glad that my master The Sussman has now had a proper finish to his recursive tail-call. And now I shall go join him. Thank you for assisting me to reach Satori."

I noticed behind closed eyelids a light getting brighter. Gently I disengaged and looked into her face. Her entire body was glowing softly. I released her and, where I had been touching her, where her breasts had been squished against my shirt, my clothes and skin glowed for a moment, then quickly faded. She placed her hand on my shoulder and brought my head down to give me a light kiss on the forehead. Then she turned towards the lake, looking over her shoulder at me. She began to evaporate into those same glowing parentheses.

"SNAKE? SNAKE?! SNAAAAAAAAAAKE?!

In a matter of seconds all traces of her had vanished, leaving only the purple book next to the tombstone. I was alone, with the sudden realization that she was Shana, the Flame Haze I had seen in my vision earlier. I picked it up and walked back to the bus stop. Once I got back home from school that day (though it was uneventful), I put the book on my shelf next to my box set of TaoCP and K&R, sat down at the computer, and turned it on.

Suddenly thinking about the world outside my world as the computer booted, I decided to see what "IRL" would do. Once the bash prompt came up, I slowly typed in those three letters and, taking a deep breath and with much apprehension, pressed the Enter key.

The X server started, and the screen displayed what my eyes would see if I was looking at the screen. An infinitude of visions appeared before me. A feeling of lightheadedness overcame me and everything vanished into pure whiteness. I opened my eyes to find myself seated in a lecture theater.

"Welcome to 6.001" was written on the board. Professor Gerald Jay Sussman walked into the room, wearing his robe and wizard hat.

"Is this a hack?" he asked as he glanced around and saw, as did I, a strangely-dressed pair of girls staring back at him.

"Nevermind, let's start the lecture." The Sussman said softly.

"I'd like to welcome you to this course on computer science. ... Actually, it's a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this business. First of all it's not a science." The Sussman lectured while the students sat and listened attentively.

"Or we'll actually see that computer... so-called science actually has a lot in common with magic." The Sussman continued.

"So procedures are the spells if you like that control these magical spirits that are the processes."

The Sussman produced a wand and waved it in the air, muttering to himself. A bright flash of light filled the room, and a stream of glowing parentheses shot out the end of the wand, dissappearing into the air. The students applauded loudly.

"But... how can he do that? He's only a human, right?" I could hear one of the strangely-dressed girls sitting near me say to her partner.

The Sussman, who up until now had paid no attention to the group, turned and stared at her with an astonished expression.

"What did you just say?" he asked, pointing his wand at her.

All of the other students turned in the direction of the group.

"Nothing," she answered quietly.

"I hope so," The Sussman said in stern tone, ending his pointing with the wand and returning it to a pocket on his robe.

"And... well I guess you know everyone needs a magical language and sorcerers, right, real sorcerers use ancient Arcadian, or Sumerian, or Babylonian or whatever. We're gonna control our spirits in a magical language called LISP, which is a language designed for talking about... for casting the spells that are procedures to direct the processes," the Sussman continued, moving his hands in a series of complex movements as he spoke.

"What a disappointment. I thought he was going to teach us magic," one of the girls muttered almost inaudibly.

Once again, the Sussman quickly turned and stared at her, retrieving his wand and pointing at her with it.

"Excuse me?" he asked, "What did you say again?"

"Nothing," she replied, trying to avoid attention.

"No, I'm pretty sure you said something. Please repeat it for us, so as not to miss a fine learning opportunity."

"She said, 'What a disappointment. I thought he was going to teach us magic'," her partner exclaimed. At the sound of those words the Sussman's face turned a bright red.

"HOW DARE YOU DOUBT ME!!" The Sussman shouted angrily. "By the power of the Y combinator I send thee to the land of Java!"

The Sussman raised his wand and a pointed it at the group, sending from its blunt point a stream of red parentheses. Almost immediately one of them sent forth a bright white beam, which collided with the parentheses at 61.8034% of their way toward her, creating a blindingly bright blue ball of plasma. The other students watched in amazement as the parentheses slowly ate their way through the beam towards her.

"Now perish!" The Sussman shouted, conjuring a huge pair of parentheses from his wand, which surrounded the group and enveloped them in a closure.

"What do we do now?!?!" she screamed at her partner.
"I don't know!" she shouted angrily in reply as the both of them hammered as hard as they could against the invisible, unyielding walls of the closure.

"I hope you learned your lesson, freaks!" The Sussman exclaimed, as the closure rose up towards the ceiling with the two trapped inside, exploding into a shower of white parentheses as it hit the top. The Sussman returned the wand to his pocket and began to continue lecturing.

Suddenly, everything froze like an overclocked processor. The piece of chalk that The Sussman was going to drop into the tray remained motionless in the air. Strangely enough, I found that I could still move amidst this strange situation.

"Hello?" I shouted at the student sitting next to me. He remained motionless and solid like an object when I tried physical force. "What now?" I thought to myself.

The windows of the lecture theater burst and a girl with long blonde hair and large breasts jumped into the room, landing near the frozen Sussman.

"Who... who are you?" I asked her.

"I am the Asakura, the Herder of the Haskell Nomads," she responded. "You, a Mystes, have something very important that I want."

"What!?!"

It was already too late. She grabbed me by the shoulder and retrieved a knife with her other hand.

"Let's see if the rumors of you being the bearer of the Reiji Maigo are true," she mumbled to herself.

I could feel Asakura lifting her knife up. Where would she start? The throat arteries, heart? If I knew how I was going to die, I could at least be prepared. At least let me close my eyes...

I suddenly felt the air shake. The knife began to fall upon me... At this moment, the ceiling gave out a loud cracking noise, followed by debris falling down. A loud booming hiss which seemed to sound like "Have you read your SICP today?" filled the air. I lifted my head and discovered... Standing in front, catching the blade with his crotch-snake, was the robed figure of The Sussman. Standing beside him, with flaming red hair, was Shana.

"You and your forced indentation." The Sussman said in his usual expressionless tone, "You think you can defy my power?"

"You want to get in my way?" Asakura sounded calm. "Once I open this Mystes, the Lord Anal Touring is bound to have some sort of reaction. Only then can we obtain more cudders."

"You are supposed to be my backup." The Sussman said in a mantra-like tone, "This sort of insubordination is forbidden; you must obey my commands."

"What if I refuse?"

"Then I will send you to the land of Java."

"Would you like to try? I have the advantage here, since this classroom belongs to MIT."

The Sussman removed his wizard hat and set it on the floor before removing a wand from a pocket on his robe. He pointed it at the knife in her hand and murmured. Shortly after, it started glowing brightly. Then, like the sugar cube being placed into a cup of tea, it slowly crystallized and dissolved and fell towards the floor like powder.

Shana walked over to me and told me not to move.

"We're in a fuzetsu," she explained. "You can move because you have the power of the Reiji Maigo. But hold still, I'll protect you while Lord Sussman takes care of her."

Asakura released the knife and jumped five meters away. Opening up the distance in an instant, Asakura landed elegantly and continued smiling as usual. The Sussman raised his wand and pointed it directly at the ceiling, not taking his eyes off Asakura. The wand released a wave of glowing white parentheses and the space around The Sussman began to distort.

"It's time for some ENTERPRISE QUALITY!" Asakura cheerfully cried as she conjured the spirits of the JVM, producing a flood of boiling-hot coffee that rushed its way towards The Sussman, who stood motionless, parentheses continuing to issue from his wand like electromagnetic radiation.

"You think your turkey solutions can stop me?" The Sussman said calmly before lowering his wand, forming the pool of parentheses now gathered around him into a sharp pointed cone aimed at Asakura. Suddenly he shouted "LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISP!" and the parentheses shot forward into the waves of coffee, pushing the boiling hot liquid back towards where it came.

"Nooooooo....." her cries became weaker as she became engulfed in the dark brown liquid. Everything turned black and I felt as though I had fainted.

I opened my eyes and felt the texture of a keyboard on my face. I raised my head from the keyboard to find an empty bottle of sleeping pills I had bought this morning, next to a suicide note. /b/ was open on the screen, and in the comment field were the lines "I have this fetish about Elmer's glue. Let me explain."

"I knew it. The Sussman wasn't going to let me die before I could achieve Satori." I thought to myself. "But what was that about a Reiji Maigo? And why was Shana there too?" I had too many questions, but at the moment my mind was filled with an overwhelming desire to finish the story of my fetish with Elmer's glue. I finished the post and clicked Submit.

"I should mention here that Mrs. Braithwaite was in her mid thirties..."

I continued typing out the next post in reply to the thread.

I continued posting the rest of my story:

"Now I am here to tell you that I felt something at that moment that I did not fully ..."
"Suddenly thinking about the world outside my world..."

I finished typing out the last post and paused, just before I clicked Submit. Thinking, I knew it would be all over if I did, since the unbounded recursion would overflow the stack running this world and end the universe. But if I didn't, the world would not be complete.
I thought about it once more. To submit or not to submit, that was the question.

In an instinctive decision I clicked the button.

"Updating page."

I sighed in relief of the fact that I was still here and nothing abnormal seemed to have had happened. The page reloaded the thread, and I looked at the post I had just posted:

"Updating page."

I sighed in relief of the fact that I was still here and nothing abnormal seemed to have had happened. The page reloaded the thread, and I looked at the post I had just posted:

"Updating page."

I sighed in relief of the fact that I was still here and nothing abnormal seemed to have had happened. The page reloaded the thread, and I looked at the post I had just posted:

"DON'T DO THAT AGAIN!"

Her scream pierced my ears as I sat there staring at the infinitely recursive fractal, feeling somewhat strange and pleased with myself. "This must be what it feels like to achieve Satori," I thought.

I just sat there, content and happy with a smug grin on my face, as I watched the screen explode into tiny fragments on contact with Shana's sword. What was she doing here?

"Hey! You just br-"
"Don't do that again, Sakai-kun..."

She placed her arms around me and pulled herself closer.

As incredible a feeling as it was to have a girl that close to me, I was still boiling with rage over the loss of my new monitor.

"But you just broke-" I started screaming at her.
"Don't worry, Sakai-kun," she said in a soft voice, and gathered the fragments with her hand. "We can use your power of existence to restore it." In a few seconds my monitor stood there unchanged from its form only moments ago, displaying the picture of Tidus I had as a wallpaper.

"My... power of existence? But..."

"You have the Reiji Maigo. Your power of existence will not run out, unlike the other Torches," she answered.
"But why are you...?"
"I have to keep an eye on you. You are a very special Mystes and the Guze no Tomogara will be wanting that Hougu of yours."
Suddenly, the same incredible feeling I had earlier returned. With little provocation my mind seemed to know what to do automatically;
"I HAVE ACHIEVED SATORI!" I screamed.

"Yes, you have now learned how to control and use your power of existence. Too bad you accidentally turned it into an infinite recursive loop," Shana said, still holding onto me. "I'll have to train you more to prevent that from happening again."

"I understand," I said.
"And I'll stay with you forever until you master your skills," she replied as we climbed into the bed together.

Meanwhile...

"Where... are we?" Koakuma whispered as she opened her eyes to find Patchouli lying next to her.

"I think that guy said something about the 'land of Java'" Patchouli said in a low voice as they both sat up to find themselves in an empty office cubicle. The sound of mouse clicks and typing could be heard coming from around them.

They cautiously walked towards the opening of the cubicle, which lead to a long, brightly lit hallway that seemed to go on forever.

"Let's find a way out of this place," Koakuma said.

They walked into the cubicle beside the one they respawned in, but it wasn't empty; there was a desk, a computer, and an expressionless, bald man with startingly white skin sat there, staring into the monitor and pressing the keys frantically. They could see he was playing Perfect Cherry Blossom.

"Umm... excuse me? Could you ---" Koakuma began.

The man remained focused on the game.

"Hello?!?!" Patchouli screamed at him while waving her arms across his eyes. The man remained undisturbed, and continued to graze with astonishing accuracy. Even when she covered her eyes completely he did not miss at all.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?" she exclaimed, kicking him and then the monitor; but nothing refused to move --- it was as if there was a barrier surrounding him.

Seeing that nothing in the cubicle would respond to their attempts at moving or destroying it, they gave up and walked out into the hallway.

"This place sure is wierd," Patchouli commented sadly, "let's see what's in the other ones."

They visited several more cubicles, but the situation was the same; in each one was a man playing one of the Touhou series, and none of them could be disturbed by anything they did. After a while, it became apparent that almost every one of the cubicles was identical, and the hallway seemed to go on forever in either direction.

They continued to walk in silence, looking into the cubicles on either side for any sign of escape. One of them seemed to be empty except for a single purple book lying exactly in the middle, and aligned perfectly with the four walls.

"This one's different! But... what can we do?" Koakuma said as they entered it.

Patchouli reached for the book, and to their surprise it moved with her touch. She picked it up and turned it over.

On the cover was a picture of a wizard and the words "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs".

"Structure and Inter--- wait, is this the SICP that snake mentioned before we ---" Koakuma exclaimed.

"I think I remember now!" Patchouli shouted excitedly. "It said something about reading SICP!" She opened it and turned to the first chapter.

They started reading the first chapter, and just as they finished the first section, the lights of the cubicle flickered and the two of them were once again immersed in darkness.

"What now?" Koakuma asked, "didn't we read it?"

A deep rumbling sound was heard, and the floor began to shake. They held onto each other as they felt themselves falling through it, then fainting.

They woke up to find that they were back in the library where they had started, and the huge black snake head was still staring at them. Patchouli continued to hold the purple book tightly against her chest.

"You have read your SICP today", the head hissed before disappearing into the air.

"Are you borrowing that book?" Patchouli looked up to see a young man smiling at her.

"Umm... hi," she replied weakly, "No, but..."

"Didn't I see you... nevermind. Can I have the book?"

"Ok..." Patchouli said as she gave the book to him, "by the way, didn't I see you..."

"You two were at that lecture hall and..." he started, "I think I haven't introduced myself yet. I'm Sakai Yuji."

"I'm Patchouli Knowledge," she replied.

"You can just call me Koakuma," her partner said.

"What happened? Did the professor...?" he started to say.

"It's a long story, I'll tell you the details if you really want."

"No, I have to go now. Nice meeting you two."

The two of them watched as he walked over to the checkout counter, where the single asian girl had been there earlier. They saw her show her tits to him, though they couldn't hear what they said to each other. Then he walked outside and onto a bus, which seemed to turn black and snakelike as it drove away.

"Such sexual beings, these humans," Koakuma said to Patchouli.